"A special 2 CDs for the price of 1 deal -- with CD 1 (stereo) music encoded for CD 2 (binaural - headphone only listening), the listener gets their own personal surround sound-for-the-head version -- the same music -- but different. This is a recording that explores the 'extra'-ordinary potential of the CD not only as a carrier of traditionally recorded instrumental sound (CD 1), but also offering a different view through binaural encoding of the same materials spatialized (CD 2). First you are presented with two solo compositions -- Kokoro and Focus a beam, emptied of thinking, outward... -- and the duo Process and Passion, in an acoustic recording, albeit with each instrument deliberately confined to one side of the stereo field. Then all three pieces are presented with extravagant sound processing, using spatialization concepts and binaural encoding, revealing unsuspected depths and energies within the sound of each of the pieces' ideas and unfolding."

"Pogus is delighted to be reissuing these 3 long out of print works. From the liner notes: ...the serpent-snapping eye (1978) was composed for trumpet, percussion, piano and 4-channel tape. The work is twenty minutes long, divided into three roughly equal sections. In the first, the primary aim of the performers is to match, submit to and intensify the taped sounds. The second, in which the synthesized sounds are sparse, introduces a felling of independence as the performers respond, reflecting on models provided by the tape. In the final section, the live performers complement and elaborate upon -- they attempt to augment -- the synthesized sound. Ping and Traces, were composed to complement one another. Ping represents a continuing interest in theater and intermedia running through Reynolds' compositions since The Emperor of Ice Cream (1961-62). In live performance the three strands of events occur simultaneously but are not synchronized. As a recorded performance, Ping is a self-sustained composition of instrumental improvisation over taped and electronic music. Traces was written for the composer-pianist Yuji Takahashi. Scored for solo piano, with flute, cello, ring modulator, signal generator, and 6 independent channels of taped sound, this work is concerned not only with events but their residues (traces)."

Originally released in1992. "Philip Larson & Carol Plantamura, voices; The Extended Vocal Techniques Ensemble; Roger Reynolds, recording. Voices, language and space interested Roger Reynolds since The Emperor of Ice Cream was written for the ONCE Festivals in Ann Arbor in the 1960s. In the 1970s, at the Center for Music Experiment in La Jolla, he heard the daily rehearsals of the Extended Vocal Techniques Ensemble and, in the evenings, read his daughter to sleep, trying to capture an individual and consistent vocal behavior for each character in the story. A demanding critic, she stimulated Reynolds' reflections on vocal identity. Electronics offered rather precise control over auditory space (a particular sound's size, location, distance, the character of the host space in which it was heard). Choosing spare but evocative texts (Borges, Melville, Stevens, Coleridge) Reynolds conjures up unfamiliar yet appropriate vocal behaviors with which to present them. The five works in the series thus far share a concern with the potential of auditory imaging: this is a subject still only tentatively broached. They attempt to create a personal theater through the mind's ear. Yet they are distinct. Three of them are presented on this CD: 'The Palace (Voicespace IV)', 'Eclipse (Voicespace III)', 'Still (Voicespace I).'"